dance with Me
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | dance with Me |
| Original title | Shall We Dance |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1937 |
| length | 109 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mark Sandrich |
| script |
Ernest Pagano , Allan Scott , PJ Wolfson |
| production |
Pandro S. Berman for RKO Pictures |
| music | George Gershwin |
| camera | David Abel |
| cut | William Hamilton |
| occupation | |
| |
Tanz mit mir (Original title: Shall We Dance ) is an American film musical with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers from 1937. Directed by Mark Sandrich , the music comes from the songwriting duo George and Ira Gershwin . The story Watch Your Step by Lee Loeb and Harold Buchman served as a literary template .
action
The American ballet dancer Peter P. Peters, who performs under the stage name Petrov, is on a European tour. He's currently dancing in an ensemble in Paris owned by goofy ballet lover Jeffrey Baird. However, Peter secretly wishes to mix classical ballet with modern jazz dance steps. One day he sees tap dancer Linda Keene in a photo, who is also in Paris. He falls in love with her and is determined to win her over. When they meet for the first time, however, Linda is not particularly fond of Peter - who initially pretends to be Russian by his stage name. All the more interested in him is Lady Denise Tarrington, a former dance partner of Peter, whom he meets again after a few years. To fend off Lady Tarrington, he pretends to be a married family man.
Shortly afterwards, Linda and Peter see each other again on an ocean liner heading for New York , but not by chance - Peter had followed her. They eventually get closer during walks on deck together. An interview with Lady Tarrington naming Peter as the father of the family, as well as the usual fantasy of the press, lead the papers to report that Peter and Linda are married. However, Linda wants to marry the New York businessman Jim Montgomery - much to the annoyance of admirer Peter and her manager Arthur, since Linda would also end her dance career with the wedding. Since neither Linda nor Peter manages to dispel the rumor about their supposed marriage, they decide to actually get married in order to officially divorce the next day.
However, Linda realizes that she has fallen in love with Peter and does not want a divorce at all. When she meets Peter with Lady Tarrington, who has since traveled to New York, Linda misunderstands the situation and finally insists on a divorce. When she wants to hand him the divorce papers at a big revue, she changes her mind and dances on stage with Peter.
background
Dance with Me was the seventh of ten films by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers together. The first rehearsals, which are said to have added up to 300 hours in the end, took place in November 1935. The film ran from December 24, 1936 to March 22, 1937. Composer George Gershwin, who had previously had a number of flops on Broadway , received $ 55,000 from RKO Pictures for his involvement in Dance With Me , compared to fees from colleagues like Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern was rather little. Together with his brother, the songwriter Ira Gershwin, he wrote six songs months before shooting began, around which a plot was then constructed. Gershwin, who was only working in Hollywood for the second time with his brother for the film, suffered from a brain tumor during the shoot, from which he died in July 1937.
Pandro S. Berman originally envisaged the renowned George Balanchine as the choreographer for the dance interludes , but Balanchine had to cancel due to his obligations at the Metropolitan Opera . The ballet scenes were then to be designed by the Russian choreographer Léonide Massine , which Harry Losee did in the end, despite his focus on modern dance . Astaire choreographed the other dance performances together with his longtime companion Hermes Pan . Just the roller skate dance performance for Let's Call The Whole Thing Off required 32 hours of preparation and four days of shooting.
The world premiere of Dance With Me took place in the United States on May 7, 1937 . After the previously published Astaire Rogers film Swing Time (1936) had only moderately cut at the box office, Tanz mit mir also made comparatively little profit at 413,000 dollars. The Gershwin songs also only became popular years later. On February 2, 1972, the film musical was shown for the first time on German television by Bayerischer Rundfunk , but in the original sound with German subtitles. Only on March 13, 1983 was a dubbed version broadcast by ZDF on television.
Music and dance numbers
- Slap That Bass ( George Gershwin , Ira Gershwin ): sung and danced by Fred Astaire in the ship's engine room
- Beginner's Luck (Gershwin, Gershwin): sung by Astaire on the crossing
- They All Laughed (Gershwin, Gershwin): first sung by Ginger Rogers, then danced by Rogers and Astaire in a ballroom
- Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (Gershwin, Gershwin): sung by Astaire and Rogers, then danced by them on roller skates
- They Can't Take That Away from Me (Gershwin, Gershwin): sung by Astaire
- Shall We Dance (Gershwin, Gershwin): first sung by Astaire, then final dance by Astaire and Rogers
German version
The German dubbed version was created in 1982 on behalf of ZDF. Brigitte Theile was responsible for the dialogue script and the dubbing .
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Petrov / Peter P. Peters | Fred Astaire | Eckart Dux |
| Linda Keene | Ginger Rogers | Andrea L'Arronge |
| Jeffrey Baird | Edward Everett Horton | Holger Hagen |
| Cecil Flintridge | Eric Blore | Manfred Lichtenfeld |
| Arthur Miller | Jerome Cowan | Randolf Kronberg |
| Jim Montgomery | William Brisbane | Franz Rudnick |
| Radio operator | Henry Mowbray | Wolf Ackva |
| Charlie | Sam Wren | Klaus Kindler |
| Registrar | William Burress | Bruno W. Pantel |
Reviews
"Lively musical with the duo Astaire / Rogers and some songs by George and Ira Gershwin that have long since become classics," wrote the lexicon of international films . But with "all the entertainment value [...] it cannot be overlooked" that numerous script ideas "repeat themselves compared to previous films by the duo and are easily worn out".
Variety found the seventh Astaire Rogers film "outstanding". The comedic plot is "solid" and the editing is "the best that an Astaire film has had in a long time". The songs are "well distributed without letting any of them stand out excessively." Inretrospect, thefilm critic Leonard Maltin found that dance with me as a less good Astaire-Rogers vehicle was “still a top musical”. The Gershwin songs would have held together "the weak plot".
Awards
At the Academy Awards in 1938 , the song They Can't Take That Away from Me from Tanz mit mir was nominated for Best Song . The songwriters George and Ira Gershwin could not prevail against Harry Owens and his song Sweet Leilani from Waikiki Wedding .
Web links
- Dance with me in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Dance with me at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Dance with me at Turner Classic Movies (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c cf. Notes on tcm.com
- ↑ cf. synchrondatenbank.de
- ↑ Dance with me. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing files , accessed on June 9, 2019 .
- ↑ Dance with me. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 9, 2019 .
- ↑ “ Shall We Dance , the seventh in the Astaire-Rogers series, is a standout […], the comedy is solid, and this is the best cutting job on an Astaire picture has been enjoyed in a long time. [...] All six songs [by George and Ira Gershwin], one more than usual, have been nicely spotted with no attempt to overplay any of them. " See Shall We Dance . In: Variety , 1937.
- ↑ "Lesser Astaire-Rogers is still top musical, with Gershwin's Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, They All Laughed, and They Can't Take That Away from Me holding together flimsy plot." Leonard Maltin : Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide 2006 . Signet, 2005, p. 1153.